Category Archives: dessert

Sandy’s chocolate cake

baking, dessert 9 Comments

You know how it goes: you remember a food as being life-alteringly good.  You build it up and build it up in your mind till you just can’t stand it anymore. You hunt and track down the recipe and make it… only to find that it’s just not as great as you remember.

That was not the experience I had with this cake. Not even close!

Ten years ago (!!!) my dear friend Sandy made this cake for me and I have remembered it ever since then as kind of being the be-all, end-all of chocolate cakes. It was moist and chocolately and amazing and delicious and worth every single calorie in it (are we still counting those?). I finally got the recipe from her and made my own this week. It is everything I remembered and more.

The Kiddo’s babysitter left for college recently (the nerve!) and we wanted to send her something sweet from home, so I made mini loaf cakes rather than the original Bundt form in the name of easier mailing. I’m happy to report it worked just fine.

You will need (you will die at how easy this is):

  • One box yellow cake mix — not the kind with pudding in the mix
  • One box instant chocolate pudding (3 3/4 oz)
  • One box instant vanilla pudding (3 3/4 oz)
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 cup chocolate chips

Do you see what I’m saying? Something that tastes this good should surely involve more effort.

Sandy’s directions:

  1. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube or Bundt pan; in my case I used three mini loaf pans (8x3x2)
  2. Combine cake mix, pudding mixes, oil, eggs, and water and beat 2-4 minutes at medium speed till everything looks smooth
  3. Stir in chocolate chips
  4. Bake in prepared pan(s) for 50-60 minutes at 325 degrees (the mini loaf pans took about 45 minutes) till a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

The beauty of this cake is that it keeps getting better — it’s even more incredible the second day and so on, so it’s perfect for mailing.

Go make this now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Make the cake. You will not be sorry.

Ice cream cone cupcakes

dessert, kids 12 Comments

It’s another episode of cooking with kids!

With The Yankee out of town, I planned a weekend of all kids, all the time. These were made with help from The Kiddo, five year old twins and a nine year old. Woohoo! With all that “help” speed was off the essence. For this project we used:

  • A box of cake mix (the kids love Funfetti)
  • Frosting (again, Funfetti for us)
  • A box of two dozen ice cream cones (with flat bottoms so they’ll stand up on a cookie sheet)

To bake them, we put a 1/4 cup of batter (it won’t look like enough, but it is) into each ice cream cone and baked them on a cookie sheet at 350 till the tops sprung back when touched (by me! No kids in the oven!) — about 25 minutes. I set them on a rack to cool while we watched a movie. Enchanted, if you must know.

After they were cooled we busted out the frosting. Did I mention speed was of the essence? Here’s how we did it:

  1. Holding the ice cream cone cupcake upside down, dunk it down into the frosting — right up to the edge of the ice cream cone
  2. Pull the cone back out of the frosting while twisting with your wrist
  3. Voila! You have a cute little twist on the top of your cupcake. Decorate with sprinkles and eat for breakfast save for a more appropriate time of day

Now then. Do these turn out the most amazingly professional looking cupcakes you’ve ever seen? Heck no. But it does let the kids get involved, and gets the cupcakes finished before you’ve they’ve eaten all the frosting with a spoon. Isn’t that a large part of the goal here? 😉 And these are great for parties! The ice cream cones keep the kids from getting their fingers messy, and there are no pans to grease, and no papers to dispose of.

Enjoy!

Spring yogurt

breakfast, dessert, kids, snacks 9 Comments

Do you know the difference between winter yogurt and spring yogurt?

Spring yogurt is cuter.

The orginal how-to is here with all the details. But a quick run-down of the process, lest you be afraid:

  1. Heat a quart of milk to 180, add 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 dry milk, plus vanilla or maple syrup to flavor
  2. Let it cool to <120 (assuming you’re using pasteurized milk, you can technically just heat it to 120 and go from there, but I find it doesn’t thicken up quite as nicely that way)
  3. Add yogurt starter: 2 Tbsp. of yogurt containing live active cultures (ideally, 2 Tbsp. you saved from your last batch of yogurt; it freezes great in ice cube trays) and stir
  4. Pour into your very cutest containers and incubate at around 115 or so for four to six hours — I do this by lining a dutch oven with a heating pad set to low, then setting the jars in it and putting the lid on. If you want to make super-cute spring yogurt, add a couple drops of food coloring in each jar, stir to combine, then proceed with your incubation

That’s it! This is worlds better and cheaper than store-bought, and you can easily strain it to make it Greek-style if your little heart desires.

Strawberries!

baking, breakfast, dessert, drinks 17 Comments

Ah, summer. Does it get prettier than this?

I picked these up over the weekend and just could not decide what to do with them. Strawberry scones? Strawberry shortcake? What about strawberry shortcake cookies?

Decisions, decisions.

In the end, I cut them up like this: And I ate them.

Every single one.

Just like that.

So now I clearly need to go buy more strawberries, and maybe actually make something with them this time.

What will you be doing with strawberries this summer?

Strawberries!

baking, breakfast, dessert, drinks Leave a comment

Ah, summer. Does it get prettier than this?

I picked these up over the weekend and just could not decide what to do with them. Strawberry scones? Strawberry shortcake? What about strawberry shortcake cookies?

Decisions, decisions.

In the end, I cut them up like this: And I ate them.

Every single one.

Just like that.

So now I clearly need to go buy more strawberries, and maybe actually make something with them this time.

What will you be doing with strawberries this summer?